Focus on the Front Line or Fall Behind: A Fresh Look at Federal Employee Engagement 

On the surface, little appears to connect the employee experience of federal transportation security officers, national park rangers, clinical biologists, or food inspection workers. Though each worker takes on a different mandate, they are all defined as front-line federal employees. These individuals, who provide direct services in their roles and consequently are unable to complete their primary responsibilities from home, serve as some of the most visible ambassadors of an agency’s mission.

Nonetheless, front-line workers frequently feel overlooked by their leadership. Oftentimes, these workers lack access to traditional communication channels, feedback mechanisms, clear opportunities for professional development, or involvement in mission-critical strategic decisions. These limitations negatively impact employee engagement and can lead to long term stagnation of the employee experience.

DEFINING FRONT-LINE

To help distill the needs of federal employees, this research categorizes federal employees based on the location and type of work they conduct. We reference “field workers” and “front-line workers” depending on the survey instrument being discussed. They are defined as follows: Field workers, as defined by the Office of Personnel Management and referenced within this report, are federal employees who responded to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey indicating that they worked in the ‘field’ as opposed to at headquarters or full-time telework. Front-line workers, as defined by this report, are a subset of federal field workers who provide direct services in their roles and are unable to complete their primary responsibilities from home. Examples of front-line workers include border officials, forest firefighters and patient care staff. Front-line workers who completed the ThrivEVP survey used in this report represent a cross-section of employees from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture Forest Service.

Each year, the Partnership for Public Service, in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group, uses data from the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey to produce the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government ® rankings – the most comprehensive rating of employee engagement and satisfaction across federal agencies and their subcomponents. The Best Places to Work data from 2023 suggests that employees at the forefront of their agency’s mission feel disconnected and disengaged. Field workers registered an employee engagement and satisfaction score of 61.7 out of 100 in 2023. By comparison, those who work at headquarters on average had a score that was 7.5 points higher.

To assess which factors are most influential for front-line staff engagement, the Partnership for Public Service, together with the Boston Consulting Group, conducted an exploratory ThrivEVP needs assessment survey of federal employees across the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture Forest Service. All three agencies volunteered to participate in this survey due to the prevalence of front-line staff across their workforce. The 15,596 employees who responded to our online survey were asked to prioritize 23 factors in the workplace that they find important. By requiring respondents to select which aspects of a workplace matter most to them, the survey provides a ranking of factors which highlight employees’ most pressing needs.

To supplement the survey findings and paint a more representative picture of the federal front-line experience, the Partnership also conducted seven qualitative interviews of human capital leaders across the federal enterprise. Each leader offered insights into the experiences of front-line workers at their agency, broadening the lens through which employee engagement professionals and key decision makers can assess the needs of their workforce.

Together, data from the FEVS, the Best Places to Work rankings, our needs assessment survey and the qualitative interviews offer an introduction to the unique desires and opportunities present within an often-overlooked segment of the federal workforce. The best practices outlined below suggest that front-line employee engagement is not only within reach, but also imperative to strengthen the mission implementation of every federal agency.

Government-wide, agencies struggle to establish an environment in which front-line staff, and field staff more broadly, are as engaged and satisfied as their headquarters counterparts. An analysis of the 2023 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey shows that field staff rate their engagement and satisfaction lower on almost every survey question. Notably their satisfaction with the recognition they receive was 9.3 points lower and their pay satisfaction was 8.1 points lower.

The contrast between the field and headquarters engagement in these selected domains is particularly concerning given the early indicators collected as part of our needs assessment survey of front-line workers, a subset of the field workforce.

The front-line employees who responded to our survey sent a clear message about the factors of a workplace which they feel are most important. When asked to indicate what variables they care the most (and least) about, front-line and headquarters workers alike consistently cited the following five factors as essential to what they are looking for in an employer:

Feeling valued and appreciated

Pay/Compensation

Feeling fairly treated and respected

Doing work I enjoy

Hours/work-life balance

While the ordering of these variables shifted depending on the respondent’s agency, these five factors establish a foundation of an ideal workplace for many front-line workers. In that ideal environment, employees highly value the functional components they need to succeed at work, like compensation and work-life balance. They also expect more emotional needs, like appreciation, respect and enjoyment, to be addressed.

As we compare the research across both surveys, the narrative becomes clear. Federal leaders are not consistently creating the type of workplace that employees outside of headquarters say that they need.

The workplace expectations uncovered by our needs assessment, in conjunction with FEVS data, suggest that agencies must employ multiple strategies to build a more satisfying environment for front-line staff and for field workers more broadly. Across a series of qualitative interviews, human capital champions identified four approaches which tailor existing best practices for employee engagement to the unique workplaces of front-line workers. Investments in strong internal communication, connections between leaders and staff, robust growth opportunities and strategic mission integration help create an environment in which employees feel that many of their most important workplace needs are addressed.

Robust, two-way communication between agency leadership and employees is essential to building trust, empowering staff and fostering engagement. In an increasingly digital workplace, access to the right information to get the job done can also be a catalyzing factor for success.

Yet, as Joe Abbott, chief human capital officer of the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, knows all too well, communicating to front-line employees can pose a unique challenge. While other federal employees may have time to review information through email chains or hybrid meeting chats, “[Our front-line employees] get a 15-minute break in the morning and a 15-minute break in the afternoon. So, there is not a lot you can communicate in 15 minutes.”

For front-line staff, people, not technology, are the primary messengers for two-way communication. Research from the private sector suggests that 67% of managers and staff receive information in-person, while 54% receive information through email. In the federal government, depending on the mission of the agency, employees may be away from regular internet access for days at a time or may only check their email every few weeks. Employees are more likely to speak to a colleague during work hours than go searching for information on a website during a break.

An overemphasis on colleagues as primary sources of information can result in a game of “telephone.” In such situations, colleagues pass on the information they receive from a secondary source. By the time that information reaches front-line employees, only part of the primary message remains. In the worst cases, staff members miss critical information about professional development or employer benefits that they are entitled to know about.

In tandem with limited time to review agency-distributed information, these fractured communication methods can become a workplace stressor rather than something to enable the staff’s connection to the rest of the workforce.

Where to Share: Embedded Within Commonly Used Systems
In this environment, the standard barrage of newsletters and internal intranet updates cannot be the only methods of information distribution. Instead, agency leaders must share news through information hubs that front-line staff may already use.

Leaders can begin by putting themselves in the shoes of their front-line workforce. Who does that worker trust? When is that worker most likely to engage with the broader workplace system? What motivates that person to stay informed?

This year, after going through a similar thought experiment at their agency, the Forest Service identified unique ways to reach its front-line workforce. As with several land-management agencies, many Forest Service employees do not use computers on a daily basis. Consequently, the leadership took advantage of the key moments when they knew employees would be connected to a computer.

Multiple offices within the Forest Service collaborated to embed information about the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey within existing technology systems. Staff from the Human Resources Office embedded a link to the FEVS within the time and attendance landing page for employees. Additionally, leaders from the Work Environment and Performance Office collaborated with the Chief Information Office to install a temporary pop-up on Forest Service staff devices that would remind employees to complete the FEVS any time they logged into their computer. Finally, the Office of the Chief sent out a calendar invitation for every payday inviting all staff to block their time to fill out the FEVS.

Where to Share: Publicly Accessible Environments

For more complex information about healthcare and retirement benefits, consider spouses and partners as other valuable messengers. Agencies that share program details directly with family members increase the transparency of critical resources. Doing so also allows staff to take time outside of work to reflect on their long-term needs and discern which programs best meet those needs. By providing information directly to the co-decision makers, agencies can decrease the chances that front-line employees will miss an opportunity or a resource due to limited in-office communication channels.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Assistant Commissioner for Human Resources Management Andrea Bright knew that expanding the pathways to reach front-line staff was critical to the success of the organization. In recent years, Bright and her team worked with regional offices across the country to set up Family Outreach events. On three weekends per year, at one regional location per weekend, CBP staff host a one-stop-shop event for front-line workers to learn about their employee benefits. Leaders from functions like Workers Compensation and Retirement Services meet with employees and their families to answer questions and share timely insights. Though Bright was initially skeptical of the impact of these efforts across such a geographically distributed organization, she realized that connecting with front-line staff would require a variety of approaches. From her perspective, “It’s not easy, but we’re really trying to find as many ways as we possibly can to reach people.”

CBP also published a public-facing employee resources page with information regarding healthcare and retirement plans, resources for navigating major life events and CBP’s Employee Assistance Program. Traditionally, this information is stored on internal servers behind agency firewalls and accessible only on a government-provided device. Given the existing time and technology limitations for front-line staff accessing web resources during working hours, CBP chose to democratize access to these pages. The team reviewed and removed any references to sensitive CBP information and was still able to publish a significant amount of the details from resource reference guides. Though the team initially faced pushback about sharing such information on a public site, Bright noted that those concerns “did not outweigh the advantage of [those resources] being accessible to the people who need information.” With these resources at their fingertips, CBP employees can work with their family members to make more informed decisions about their workplace benefits.

In the 2023 Best Places to Work rankings, an employee’s connection to the mission of their organization emerged as the most important driver of engagement and satisfaction. Though field employees often directly interact with the members of the public served by their agency, the Best Places to Work data suggests that they are less connected to the mission. In 2023, field staff scored 4.4 points lower than their colleagues at headquarters on the Best Places to Work Mission Match category, which measures how strongly employees identify with the mission, believe their work is important and appreciated and feel a sense of accomplishment from performing the job.

Proximity to the implementation of an agency’s mission does not automatically strengthen an employee’s connection to it. Instead, agency leaders, especially when interacting with front-line staff, must demonstrate how those employees’ everyday work contributes to the broader efforts of the organization. Without explicitly outlining the connection between the strategy and implementation, front-line staff may perceive initiatives launched from headquarters as out of touch with their work.

Bridge the Gap: Defer to front-line expertise in mission implementation
Front-line workers can serve as powerful catalysts of an agency’s organization-wide strategy. To capitalize on that energy, leaders must build the perspectives of front-line staff into every phase of strategy implementation.

In 2019, the Department of Veterans Affairs embodied this approach while shifting its workplace priorities. That year, the VA began its journey to become a High Reliability Organization – an industry term to describe a workplace in which employees look for, and report, small problems or unsafe conditions to reduce the likelihood of adverse events. As part of this process, the VA established five principles to shift the way its staff thinks about patient safety. One of these five principles was “Sensitivity to Operations – Focus on Front-Line Staff and Care Processes.” With this shift, any action to achieve the VA’s broader strategy must account for the relevant systems that front-line staff use to care for patients.

To further empower front-line staff to invest in, and model, a high reliability environment, the VA provided baseline training to all front-line staff and supervisors as well as leadership coaching on the principles of an HRO. As Jessica Bonjorni, chief of human capital management at the Veterans Health Administration, explained, “The organization really has invested in making it clear that this is the way we want you to do business.”

In addition to embedding a front-line staff approach within the strategy, the VA intentionally chose to begin the program rollout at the front lines. Given the role that front-line staff play in setting the standard for the patient’s perspective of VA and confidence in their own treatment, Maureen Marks, executive director of the VA’s National Center for Organization Development, celebrated the front-line first approach. “The decision was that rolling [out the HRO initiative] to the field would be the most impactful thing to do. It would impact our veterans more quickly in a more tangible way,” Marks said.

These investments not only improved patient safety, but also improved staff engagement. Since 2020, the VA has increased its Best Places to Work engagement and satisfaction score from 70 to 71.8, becoming one of the top five large agencies in the rankings.

Bridge the Gap: Make mission alignment personal

Mission match rests on employees’ personal connection to their work and attachment to the organization. When promoting the mission connection as a differentiating factor to potential employees, agencies must articulate the front-line employee’s critical role in that mission as well as their potential to grow.

At the Transportation Security Administration, recruiters and front-line managers collaborate to promote TSA as a place where your work makes a difference. When prospective candidates consider opportunities at TSA, they are invited to view a job at TSA as a chance to protect the traveling public and keep the nation secure. For those coming from a military background, TSA Deputy Assistant Administrator for Human Capital Linwood Smith believes these messages can be particularly powerful. From his perspective, applicants “still want to continue that mission of supporting and defending the United States.” When younger staff join the organization without a lived experience of the tragedies of 9/11, Smith noted that “supervisors and other colleagues [encourage those who don’t know] to get on their phone and Google 9/11 so they understand the purpose.”

Those same recruiters and front-line managers also celebrate TSA as a workplace in which individuals can grow professionally while contributing to the mission. Since TSA competes for talent with employers in the same building—the airport—the agency consistently emphasizes that a role at TSA has more benefits than a paycheck. While in the past some applicants have approached TSA as an intermediary step to another job, the agency has recently committed to professionalizing the workforce as a way to encourage recruitment and retention. Through a combination of internal communications from the TSA administrator, and recruitment videos that highlight growth opportunities within TSA, Smith and his team have witnessed a shift in perspectives.

“A lot of prospective candidates were looking for a career, but were thinking, ‘Maybe I can start here and jump.’ Now, we have people that are saying, ‘I can start here and stay here,’” Smith said.
Those who stay can take advantage of internal detail opportunities, partial academic scholarships, and beginning in 2023, career advancement opportunities for employees during their first three years in the same role.

To improve engagement and build a positive work experience, employees need to know their voices matter and that their feedback is being taken seriously.

For individuals like Kimberley Peters, branch chief for data, analysis and evaluation at the Forest Service, collecting that feedback from the front-line workforce can be its own challenge. When Peters reaches out to supervisors and encourages them to provide their feedback through the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, “they tell me that they don’t have time to relax in front of a computer and take the FEVS. They are hiking 40 miles, sleeping in tents and only coming back to do their timesheet.” Across government, the technical challenge of collecting feedback can be compounded by concerns that the results of the survey will not drive meaningful change for front-line staff, creating a disengaging environment.

If employees at the forefront of an agency’s efforts do not have consistent access to traditional feedback mechanisms, or feel that their feedback is not being addressed, senior leaders won’t know which challenges and opportunities are most relevant to their work environment.

The 2023 Best Places to Work scores suggest staff at the front lines of the agency’s mission are dissatisfied with senior leaders. Of the Best Places to Work workplace categories, the gap between field and headquarters staff was the largest for the Effective Leadership: Senior Leaders category. Field employees scored 52.1 out of 100 while employees at headquarters scored 62.4 for this category.

Connection Point: Within the Field
When staff perceive that leaders at headquarters don’t understand the nuances of their experience, bringing leaders to the front lines can be a powerful way to identify meaningful wins and reestablish a connection to the larger system. Trips to local offices provide leaders with an opportunity to hear firsthand about the conditions that most influence the work of their employees.

For agencies with a broad national reach, senior leadership visits can illuminate some of the most pressing needs, especially those that may not rise to the top of national level survey data. As Assistant Commissioner Bright articulated when reflecting on the value of site visits at CBP, “[The staff raise concerns that are not] the things that we’ve been thinking about in terms of employee engagement.” Issues like parking availability or facilities management at an individual location are more challenging to identify when examining a synthesized assessment of regional or national needs. But, from Bright’s perspective, “There is a huge impact on engagement from these basic needs…things that nag at you [make you think], ‘If people really cared about me, they would fix [it].’” Kathy Stewart, director of the Personnel Research and Assessment Division at CBP, noted that a visit from a senior leader is a signal to staff “that they’re being heard and that we want to hear from them.”

Local visits need not be restricted to senior leaders. Human resources staff at the Department of Agriculture are invited to visit field locations to improve their understanding of the responsibilities of front-line staff. Anita Adkins, chief human capital officer at USDA, affirmed that field visits are “one of the core principles of our USDA human resources opportunity. Having the HR staff go in and see what it’s like for our employees to do the work gives you not only a greater appreciation for that work and how it’s being performed, but the resources and tools available to that workforce.”

That ethos carries through all of USDA, including at subcomponents like the Food Safety and Inspection Service. Human resources staff who work under Joe Abbott, chief human capital officer at FSIS, spend a whole day at inspection service facilities. HR staffing, classification and benefits specialists work alongside slaughter and processing inspectors, who check animal parts to ensure they meet safety standards. While there, Abbott’s team also connects with supervisors of these front-line employees who work at the next step in the career ladder above the inspectors.

Abbott emphasizes to his staff that they have to “experience the challenges of an inspector to help figure out how to make [the career transition] better.” These hands-on experiences allow Abbott’s staff to understand the nuances and career pathways between different types of employees at the facility.

Connection Point: Within Headquarters
A visit from leaders is one approach to make front-line staff feel like their perspectives are valuable to the success of the agency. Another approach to incorporate feedback from this population is to consider the needs of front-line workers at the outset of planning and policymaking.

At the Transportation Security Administration, the voices of front-line staff are not merely referenced in abstract—they are invited into regular decision-making conversations through a Uniformed Advisors program. As part of a competitive detail opportunity, two former front-line staff members are selected to serve as temporary liaisons to the administrator. For two years, each Uniformed Advisor becomes a live representative of the front-line experience.

Kim Hutchinson, the deputy executive assistant administrator for enterprise support at TSA, uses these advisors as a reasonability test for initiatives that her team wants to roll out to the front lines. Uniformed advisors speak regularly with supervisors across the nation and with the TSA administrator. Hutchinson notes that their insights are “a great gut check for us to have these people at headquarters that reach back to supervisors in the field and kind of tell us what’s going well, and what isn’t.

For more than 20 years, the Government Accountability Office has designated mission-critical skill gaps as a high risk to government effectiveness. The risk to employee engagement is particularly prominent at the furthest reaches of an agency’s efforts. According to the 2023 Best Places to Work data, field workers rank their satisfaction with their agency’s professional development opportunities more than six points lower than their headquarters counterparts. Investments in this workforce can help close the engagement gap and catalyze risk reduction throughout the agency.

From a talent management perspective, field roles, and front-line roles more specifically, offer a window of opportunity for many in the public to join the federal workforce. Employees learn the most critical skills for success in their role through experiential and on-the job training, and research about the private sector suggests that the vast majority of front-line staff know what is expected of them and have the information to do their jobs. However, human capital managers cannot leverage the expertise of this group to plug skills gaps in their agency without investing in the professional growth of those front-line workers. Additional research from the Boston Consulting Group suggests that staff departures due to lack of growth opportunities exacerbate staffing shortages that already plague the front lines.

Federal managers play a key role in how their front-line staff, and field workers more broadly, perceive the availability of professional development opportunities. Government-wide, supervisor scores serve as a bright spot. The 2023 Best Places to Work data showed that federal employees gave supervisors a score of 80.2 for effective leadership, making it the highest-rated workplace category. That trend continues for field workers. But the strength of supervisor scores does not suggest that supervisors should be excluded from development opportunities or should be passive participants in creating a culture of engagement. Rather, agencies should see the supervisory experience as a key lever to use when considering the professional development of their full team and invest in structures that keep those supervisors engaged.

Thus, successful professional development efforts must account for the needs of staff and their managers.

Expect and Cultivate Staff Growth
Based on our needs assessment survey of the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture Forest Service, front-line respondents had similar or lower confidence than their headquarters counterparts that employees at their agency have a fair and equal chance to succeed regardless of background or identity. And yet, for those three agencies, the availability of career and advancement opportunities was consistently one of the top three factors impacting front-line employee job satisfaction. Together, these metrics suggest that clear pathways for growth in the organization are critical to the employee engagement of front-line workers.

Robin D. Bailey, Jr., chief operating officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has witnessed the hunger for professional growth firsthand.

“Since I’ve been here 30 plus months, this has been the most consistent feedback I’ve received from staff—the need to create more consistent developmental opportunities,” he said.

To meet this need, the CDC’s Office of Human Resources implemented a comprehensive talent-development model designed to ensure all CDC employees, including front-line staff, have access to intentional growth opportunities.

OHR advertises all opportunities directly to the staff rather than through their supervisor or team. Furthermore, all employees who apply for development through this enterprise-wide approach have their applications reviewed by an impartial committee, which makes selections based on the strength of the application materials. According to Bailey, this approach “changes the conversation. By providing employees the freedom to choose the appropriate career path for their circumstances and the empowerment to chart their own career, we can create work-life harmony while improving transparency.”

Expect and Cultivate Manager Growth
Frontline managers play a keystone role in the engagement of front-line workers, including their growth and development. Research from the Boston Consulting Group suggests that front-line workers who advance in their career are 23% more likely than their peers to have had frequent manager-led discussions. While managers serve a key function in advancing the development of their staff, that role is typically one part of a vast portfolio of responsibilities. Managers often handle the functional needs of staffing, operational readiness and skill alignment for their team as well as the emotional needs of appreciation and connecting the work to the mission.

Front-line managers are also uniquely responsible for bridging the communication gap between leaders and implementers because of the barriers that affect information distribution to front-line staff. Private sector studies suggest that almost half of HR professionals use managers and supervisors to share key messages to their organization’s front-line employees. Relatedly, managers are often responsible for elevating feedback from their direct reports to leadership, while managing the relationships with their own supervisors and leadership structures.

Given these competing demands, front-line managers experience significant burnout; estimates suggest 49% of front-line supervisors experience burnout on a daily basis. For a population that is essential for carrying out mission-specific responsibilities, any persistence of manager burnout can negatively impact the engagement of the full workforce. Trickle down effects of disengagement are particularly concerning at the front lines. Front-line workers who are dissatisfied with their manager are 50% more likely than their peers to feel burned out and twice as likely to leave, according to the Boston Consulting Group.

Thus, these managers need more than standard supervisory training requirements—they need developmental opportunities that recognize the nuances of leading staff at the front lines.

The National Park Service recognized this gap and incorporated additional training needs into its New Superintendents Academy. Superintendents work at the intersection of staff needs and leadership priorities—they are responsible for the management of an individual park or several smaller park areas and report to the director of the region. To standardize the leadership experience, all superintendents are required to attend a series of training sessions over the course of a year. These front-line leaders learn about the cultural vision of NPS as well as “how to deal with some of the more nuanced things that a general supervisor wouldn’t have to deal with, like public relations skills, tribal relations… [and] how to leverage workplace flexibilities in terms of employee schedules and work arrangements,” according to Rita Moss, associate director at the National Park Service.

Since superintendents balance regional nuances with organization-wide expectations, the Superintendent Academy also offers several elective courses. Moss emphasized that “We [at NPS] know that every park is different” and have designed trainings sessions to allow superintendents to learn about what matters most to them.

Given the incredible breadth of functions, workplace environments and missions of federal employees, no engagement strategy can succeed with a “one size fits all” approach. Specifically, federal employees who conduct their duties at the front line of their agency, without an ability to complete their roles from home, deserve and require engagement efforts which are tailored to their needs.

Data which describes the experiences of this group do not paint a promising picture. Front-line staff, and field workers more broadly, experience lower levels of employee engagement than their headquarters counterparts by almost every measure. And yet, the approaches to increase engagement for front-line workers only require slight adjustments to best practices that would also engage the rest of the federal workforce.

Through targeted investments in communication channels, feedback mechanisms, professional development pathways and mission-critical strategic collaborations, agency leaders have an opportunity to change the conversation about front-line work. Those who fail to do so might lose existing talent, miss opportunities to bring new employees into the fold and forgo the chance to truly become a Best Place to Work.